Gotta love Oilers new conferences on a sunday announcing JS to Edmonton. Canada Day is turning out just tickety boo. Smyth signs. Danis signs. This day can only get better if belanger and Eager are traded for beer and steak.
Happy Canada

Am I the only guy who thinks taking a run at Peter Mueller makes a lot of sense? He's 24, highly skilled, can play wing or center, and injuries have depressed his asking price...yeah you would be accepting his concussion risks, but getting a strapping top 6 forward with offense at a relatively young age, and without giving up any assets, makes too much sense to me.

Methot for Foligno. Good trade for CBJ. I think it prbably indicates that Ottawa is out on the Nash deal unless they are willing to give up some other frontline assets. They trade Foligno and add Methot and Latendress. Bigger and more skill.

If the rats are leaving the ship in New Jersey would it not make sense for them to go after Nash?

The rats are also leaving Pheonix. Yandle? The NHL must be wanting to dump some of that salary to ensure new ownership is paying as little out as possible. Why else offer Yandle? Or let Whitney go. Or risk Doan on FA? For sure they will be at the bottom of the salary scale come September.

The day Wideman was signed by the Flames I maintained that they could of/should of used that money on someone else, and for cheaper. I suggested that a guy like Bryan Allen would be a good choice. I said that we could have signed Allen to a 3.5$ million dollar per year deal for around 3 years, which would not have been a gross overpay/overcommitment. I stand by that today. Allen got a 3 year deal from Anaheim, paying him 10.5 million over the length of the contract. I believe that that contract will end up being a better value contract for Anaheim than the Wideman one for CGY. The Flames payed top dollar for a guy who will finish in the top 20 in points by Dmen next year. Ducks got a shutdown guy that plays big minutes against good players for quite a bit less.

Not saying that Wideman is gonna suck in Calgary or anything, but I think it'd be much safer to have signed Allen to the contract that ANA signed him to.

I want hudler. Great +|- last yr and can play both wings. Only 28. Everyone's eating crow now about sideman being overpaid! Anyone seen the contracts being dished out for garbage?! Prust for 2.5? What? Widemans a great deal! Very very happy!

Hudler's +/- is naturally going to be good, he played on the detroit red wings.......If you look at the Flames lineup, nobody had that impressive of +/-, yet Iginla/many others are probably better tha +/-. We shouldn't sign somebody just based on that. Let's get Jagr. Move makes sense, another top 6 forward he could help Cervenka transition to the NHL while potting 20-25 goals. As long as it's not for more than 4M$ and no more than one year I'm fine with it. If it doesn't work out, trade Jagr at deadline.

I didnt mention just his plus minus. i mentioned his versatility in that he can play both wings. He's listed as a right and left winger on tsn.ca. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO Jokinen!

Looks like a lot of teams are tired of getting pushed around. Montreal and Buffalo players got a lot braver today. Calgary, on the other hand are still going to get run out of every rink we play in. Unless the other team decides to skate. Then we will get skated out of that rink. Seriously though, there isn't a heck of a lot that can be done immediately with this roster unless we traded Kipper and Iggy and started to form a new culture. I bet if we traded those 2, we would finish 13-15 this year instead of 11-12. If we don't, we finish 11 - 13 for a long while.

The only problem that I see with the Wideman deal is that his ice time needs to be managed. You would hope that a $5.25M player would be able to start in any zone, kill penalties, etc. Looking at his advanced stats, it is pretty clear that even though he averaged almost 24 min/game last year, his quality of competition and defensive zone starts were being managed. He will clearly need to be paired with a defensively responsible partner.

I think Feaster is pretty certain that he won't / wouldn't be signing Suter, Carle, Garrison, or any of the other top-flight D-men available. He may have been a bit hasty and signed Wideman to a deal that would approximately be what he felt was market value. Sarich... Feaster got hit in the head that day most likely. That's the only explanation I have.

If Garrison lives up to even half of his previous performance, then Vancouver is scary good right now. Especially if they get something even halfway decent for Luongo/Schneider. If he ends up like Ballard, then hahaha, they should've learned the first time.

erm... since when is 49% (OFFENSIVE starts) managed zone starts? For a player like Wideman, that should NEVER fall bellow 51% (like what Giordano got last season). The Caps misused him, no question.

as for that being a problem with his deal... well, it is. But look at the contracts for similar players: James Wisniewski: 5.5. Christian Ehrhoff: 4 (for 10 years--TEN!!! he earns 30 million over the first 5 years of that deal).

Personally, I would take Wideman over either of the above, never mind the contracts.

The fact that Feaster offered a contract to Moss was interesting, he was willing to resign Comeau, Stempniak and Moss.

On Wideman, more concerned about the length of the contract, and yes, another NMC. We might get value through year three, but it sounds iffy for years 4 - 5 - much like the original Sarich contract. We paid full market value (and that's an inflated free agency market price) for Wideman, would have preferred a 3 year deal.

On Moss, a big body out of the door, however, I wouldn't have signed him to a 2 yr $2.1 million per contract.

On Sarich, kind of surprised to see him resigned when we have so many bottom end d-men.
Then again, the Flames have far to many soft d-men, Sarich helps that, but I think I would have looked elsewhere. Overall, not a terrible contract.

Overall concerns, we have lost some bigger bodies in Jokinen, Moss and Kostopoulos, kepted the softer guys in Comeau and Stempniak, and added a soft dman in Wideman. So far, less sandpaper rather than more... Not sure how we replace Jokinens points. Hopefully, a lot more to come.